Parlance

Adopting SCRUM in Global Delivery

2008-12-12T10:10:11Z

Recently (Oct 2008), I gave a presentation at a delivery management summit held by Microsoft at Cancun about Adopting SCRUM in a global delivery model.

The adoption though not a run-away hit , has its own unique flavor and challenges more so when the customer is not even used a global delivery/onsite-offshore model the biggest one is that of the product owner not being in close proximity to the team , though with the usage of technologies some of these issues can be solved , there is also the other challenge of where the SCRUM Master needs to be and what’s the role of an offshore project manager and how he can contribute to the development life cycle.

Not silver bullets – but from my experience of executing some of these projects, here’s a set of “Best Practices”

SCRUM Workshops for all the stake-holders during project initiation
Break between sprints to review Specifications ( In case on unclear requirements)
Treat the first few sprints as learning sprints , and let the team find their pace
Decide on sprint duration during Sprint planning meeting
Conduct feasibility analysis during deal structuring stage
Conduct health check meetings after 3-4 sprints in long duration projects including all stakeholders even if you're doing regular retrospectives
Documenting every decision made on the SharePoint Wiki Site, post the stand up meet
Project sponsors and management buy-in and intervention , when needed
Usage of BA to be proxy product owner
Continuous coaching by experienced SCRUM Masters

SCRUM in Infrastructure Projects

2008-11-24T12:50:52Z

I have met quite a few project managers who have made the jump from one side to the other, I.e. moved from Infrastructure and the construction world to IT and vice versa , this was possible because all of them were pure Project Managers at heart with the PMI discipline etched in their DNA and this makes me wonder if a SCRUM Master of a practitioner of SCRUM Methodology can ever go to the other side ?

Can we actually use agile principles on the other side ? What will Iterative development mean to them, If I am constructing a house how can I go Iterative ? Do I do it room by room , can I start living in a part of house while I get the other part of the house constructed ? Can I really see value / benefit in this ? Though the Idea might sound outrageous I believe this can be done , the next little project that I do which is non IT, either learning photography or making pottery artifacts I will consciously try and go the agile way !

SCRUM and The Nokia Test

2008-06-19T08:52:59Z

Was hearing Jeff Sutherland talk about the Nokia test , a test developed by Nokia to test whether you’re doing Iterative development or not , and if yes if you’re really doing SCRUM.

Are you Iterative ?

Iterations must be timeboxed to less than 4 weeks
Software features must be tested and working at the end of each iteration
The Iteration must start before specification is complete

The second point throws up a debate on what testing means , most of the companies that do partial SCRUM try and do a separate test sprint and for them the above “tested” - means unit tested , or at the most integration tested but not “functional “ tested , I did see a lot of implementations diligently trying to go the SCRUM way , and not being able to make it , because this is where they falter.

Are you implementing SCRUM ?

You know who the product owner is
There is a product backlog prioritized by business value
The product backlog has estimates created by the team
The team generates burndown charts and knows their velocity
There are no project managers (or anyone else) disrupting the work of the team

Another place where most of the teams fail , even if you are doing the first part well , is at the product owner part , most of the times in services industry when we try SCRUM , we look at one of the key customer stakeholder as a product owner , and that stakeholder more often than not , does not understand what is expected out of him and that he too is an important Cog in the wheel , the customer needs to be told and trained on the methodology and needs to be completely on-board for SCRUM to be successful.

Typically most of the SCRUM Masters are project managers who are taking on those roles and some of the old habits die hard , the fourth point above about the “team” generating burn charts will not be true in these cases since the project manager / SCRUM Master has this urge of asking people the status and updating himself – so the team / team members really do not know how they are all running together , usage of tools becomes very important here , in the absence of tools , there should at least be enough diligence to make sure that each team member takes upon himself the task of going and updating the status so the burn chart gets generated.

Fat SCRUM

2008-04-12T21:33:27Z

was reading a very interesting blog about Fat agile and lean agile and I realized that some more things can be added to that list and one most important thing is the what I call the “ CMMi vicious circle of life “

This happens when the management has half heartedly given a buy-in simply because they do not want to be left behind in the race of adopting the “lean” and agile methods and yet at the same time have process guys that come from the brick and mortar background and do insist on a master project plan ! the process / SQA face of the company also needs to be infused with fresh blood that can audit projects basing on their SCRUM effectiveness and not by the sheer amount of documentation that is needed

Mind sets and Enterprises

2008-03-27T08:52:16Z

For any enterprise to take on an new methodology or a framework that it can adapt , certain paradigm shifts need to be made in thinking or changing its Mind sets

What comprises of mind sets ?

I would say that organizations do not really start as infants , in fact they start as adolescent teenagers ( the painful kinds ! ).The first people who get in to start things , make rules, policies come with their baggage and start doing things the way they are comfortable with and the way their previous organizations have taught them to . When new people come into the company they start imitating these pretty much like the teenager who imitates his rock /pop idol’s hairdo.

And if those mind sets are not the ones that encourage “self driven” way of doing things , they need to be changed .

HR, recruiting needs to be aware of these trends in the industry and should probably have measurable mechanisms that look for a couple of things

1.> How self driven is a resource ?

2.> How adaptable to change is the resource being hired ?

Getting a change , shift in thinking never works in Isolation ,it needs to be well thought out and needs to be collaboratively tackled .

SCRUM and enterprise adoption

2008-03-23T11:53:06Z

What kind of enterprises would be willing to take a risk that fundamentally changes the way they work ?How do we get conventional organizations that believe in strong hierarchies to adopt SCRUM ?

Traditionally organizations that believe in experimenting and wanting to adopt to new trends , and the companies that believe in making new products do jump at any opportunity that challenges the conventional ways , show a product company that there is no major documentation , no “CMMi” level documentation that is needed and no heavy process and it would jump at the first opportunity to go the SCRUM way ,really we’re not talking about enterprises of that sort.

Imagine a company “ A” that has at least 12-14 different titles between Software engineer and “ General manager “ , can you really get that org to use SCRUM ? the answer I am afraid is very disappointing ! the adoption fails at all levels and it has to be solved both ways bottom up and top down

Lets take a cross section of this people at all levels and get them into a room and start talking about how SCRUM works and how we can leverage it to create products faster , the first challenge that I get would be is when I talk about self organization , even a software engineer who is last in the food chain would say “ if I do all the planning ,what’ll my lead do ? “ this coming from a young lad who just passed out of college is very disheartening , yet there seems to be a sad reality that’s in the face for us – he is not saying that because he doesn't want to take responsibility he is saying that because these organizations traditionally do not reward aggression , passion and risk takers , these companies have middle managers and managers that sit in glass rooms and talk to these fresh engineers and tell them one constant thing , year after year and appraisal after appraisal “you need to be more proactive “ and by that they mean that these guys take up the additional administrative responsibilities that the leads are supposed to be doing (E.g: collating the defect data etc for the status reports) , but when the guy actually starts taking a stab at being proactive on the design front , it hits him back and his appraisal report this time around would have a statement like “ needs to perform well in the real of his roles and responsibilities” ! the mid management and the technical leads start feeling threatened and then they nip that proactive-ness in the bud and then the whole concept of self organization falls flat !

This happens more so in the Asian subcontinent, how does one tackle this , when I was doing this : I was told by a middle manager “ I don't think this works well in real life this is good only on paper ” what is it that i can tell him ! ?

Hello World

2008-03-21T14:00:47Z

Hello world